Another American Adventure: Our Xmas Tree this year

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Our Xmas Tree this year

This is our Xmas tree this year - a lovely paper origami made by Taylor Wells. Taylor has been incarcerated since 1993. We've known him since 1980, when he was 5 years old. A wonderfully creative, sensitive, and kind young man, we are honored with his friendship all these years.

I've had the creche since about 1955. My father brought it home from Gethsemane one Xmas Eve. It was made by one of the monks, and is about the only sentimental thing that I bring out, Christmas after Christmas.

The intriguing abstract ink painting was made by our faithful and delightful cyber-friend from Montreal. She sent it as a card to us last Xmas, and the only work of art in our little apartment/cave here in Cranberry TWP. We enjoy it immensely.

It all sits upon a bookcase that John found in the dumpster.

2 comments:

BarbaraDecember 13, 2011 at 3:09 PM
I really like that Christmas tree. All I have nowadays is a spray of silver-painted twigs. I am honoured by the place my wee painting has on your mantel. It looks well framed. I have to select one that will work well with the last one. I have a piece in mind -- my teacher wanted me to keep it as a part of a complete work, but I had already decided to cut it out and place it on a card. One minute she thinks it is OK (so-so) and then it is worth saving. Phooey! I like it and want to use it for a card.
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beth cioffolettiDecember 13, 2011 at 3:44 PM
I will love it, Barbara. I love ALL of your artwork! When this one has a partner, I will put them on the wall - hooks and holes and all!

I love the Xmas tree too. It carries a lot of meaning for us, with a lot of years of sorrow.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.